Hotlinking is an expression that represents the addition of images on a particular website using direct links. If you have website A, for example, and a person creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images shall load directly from your web hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other types of files too. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

It won't take more than a few mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink security function which we offer you even if this is the first hosting account which you use, as all of our Linux cloud hosting include a quite simple and easy to work with tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it has the same intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to switch on this service only for a specific site folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear in this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we've developed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you switch on this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your actual images. You will only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as elementary as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to activate the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - go back to exactly the same section, check the box beside the specific website and then press the Delete button.